Today's advent book has got me thinking about traditions. One of my favorite family traditions is to make Christmas goodies throughout the month of December. While it's sometimes an arduous task (there have been years that we had 30+ unique treats for our Christmas feast!!), it is always exciting to reveal the efforts after squirreling them away for the entire month. It used to frustrate me so much to spend hours each afternoon baking and decorating only to have my treasures boxed up and frozen as soon as I was done ... Nowadays, it feels more like banked effort. And it's fun to pull things out and share if you have surprise company. (I'm going to be honest, the only "company" we ever had was grandma and grandpa lol ... but if you live in a family with four starving boys, a cookie can go a long way towards keeping the peace!) This year in particular I have also been drawn to our Scandinavian traditions, specifically Hygge: I recognize now that this c...